It’s more altomore heavy and therefore more stable, but also more agile and delicate. Kinder, which for a robot is not an easy thing at all. It’s called iCub 3 and it’s the new version of the most famous among the many robots of the Italian Institute of Technology.
It took over a year of work to create it, even if the ideas underlying the project, and especially the concept of tele-existence that accompanies it, date back to at least 4-5 years ago. It took time, and it took money too. Much money: “Only the robot, of which a single example currently exists, costs around 300 thousand euros – told us Daniele Pucci, head of the IIT Artificial & Mechanical intelligence laboratory and voice of iCub in the video at the top to this page – Another 100-150 thousand euros were spent on accessories, such as the all iFeel which serves to allow humans to interact with him, and for the development of the software and artificial intelligence that governs him “.
An important investment for an important machine, which can be used by people with disabilities motor to get back to moving in some way, from workers to access inaccessible or dangerous places, by tourists to visit distant places or very distant from home. All without having to move from home.
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How is iCub 3 made and what is it for
As mentioned, the new iCub is more massive than the previous one, it is about twenty centimeters higher and has integrated cables inside it, as well as having better cameras to see the surrounding environment and more advanced force sensors. All these changes have a specific purpose: “The robot now exceeds 1 meter and 20 in height, so that it can give a more realistic point of view to adults who will observe the world through its eyes and also can reach objects that are higher up. than before – Pucci explained to us again – Having removed the cables allows him to be more agile and to have fewer obstacles during movement, while force sensors allow him to better understand how much to use depending on the contextfor example if he has to grab an object or shake someone’s hand ”.
What iCub 3 can do (indeed: what can be done with iCub 3), IIT researchers demonstrated last year during the Venice Biennale, when the robot walked alone in the Italian Pavilion. Alone in the sense that it was remotely controlled from the IIT headquarters in Genoa. Which is something that could also be done with the previous iCub, but which had never been done from this far away: the operator was more or less 400 kilometers away and could see what the robot sawfeel what the robot felt, speak through him and also having through him (and his skin full of electronic endings) the perception of what iCub touched or was touched by. All wirelessly and with a response delay of just 25 milliseconds.
How is this possible? Especially through 3 devices:
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a virtual reality headset (“We used an Htc Vive, adapting it to our needs”, Pucci told us), which not only allows us to see what is around the robot, but also to make him nod when the operator nods or to make him close his eyes or moving his eyebrows, improving his ability to interact with humans;
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a structure for virtual realitywhich detects the direction and speed of the walk and allows the person to freely move legs, feet, arms and hands and to make the robot move accordingly;
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a sensorized suitwhich is called iFeel and was created precisely for this reason, which must be worn and allows to track the operator’s body movement and transmit it to the robot and provides tactile sensations, so that you can perceive when and where the robot is touched.
What’s the use of all this? From IIT they explained to Italian Tech that “the main purpose we have thought concerns the prosthetics of the future, people who have lost the use of one or more limbs or who are unable to move, so that they can go back to doing it in a virtual environment. And maybe even get back active in the world of work “. And then again, just the job’s world, which can be carried out remotely in places potentially dangerous for human health or difficult to access. Finally, the tourism: in the future, it is not difficult to imagine museums that equip themselves with robots with these characteristics and perhaps allow the purchase of special tickets for a virtual reality visit that can be done from home, even if the house is on the other side of the world .
The technology inside iCub 3
The new robot has been totally developed within IIT, from hardware to software, including artificial intelligence algorithms that allow him to understand how to behave and to act by simulating as much as possible what a human being would do.
In detail, iCub 3 is a humanoid robot that has the features of a teenager, has implemented and sensorized hands, arms covered with artificial leatherLED lights on the face that help to improve its expressiveness, mobile cameras instead of the eyes, microphones in the ears and speakers behind the mouth, weighs just over 50 kilograms and is equipped with a battery that guarantees it about an hour of autonomy.
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When will iCub 3 be available and what will happen to 2
Given all this, the question of questions is only one: how long is it before iCub 3 is really available to the general public? How much money will it take to get it? “This version of iCub is a bit like the Formula 1 of robots – Pucci told us with a smile – is very advanced, uses the most modern technologies and costs a lot of money. And it will probably remain a concept, a specimen to be used for tests and demonstrations “. Because? “Because what we wanted was to prove that we could do it, that we could aim for the maximum and achieve the goal. But from here on, getting off will be easy ”. What do you mean? “In the sense that it is not difficult to imagine, too over a period of 2-3 yearsthat a museum can really equip itself with a less refined version of iCub, such as fewer sensors, without artificial skin and LEDs on the face, to be used to offer customers the possibility of a virtual reality visit “.
What about iCub 2? What will happen to it? “It will stay: there are about fifty around the world, and we cannot stop supporting them, updating them and maintaining them”. Yup, Why (as we wrote on Italian Tech last September), iCub is a robot, but it is also a research platform on humanoid robotics, which is open source and on which laboratories in Europe, the United States, Japan and South Korea work: “It remains a great machine and we will continue to support it – there Pucci said again – but we must look to the future. AND the future, in this field, goes in the direction in which iCub 3 goes“. Walking alone, even if guarded from a distance.